Investment and Enterprise

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The Division is recognized as a global centre of excellence on issues related to investment and enterprise for sustainable development.

Built on several decades of successful experience, its staff provide international expertise in research and policy analysis, inter-governmental consensus-building, and technical assistance to over 150 countries.

Its flagship product is the annual World Investment Report and its main global stakeholder event is the biennial World Investment Forum.

The Division maintains an interactive World Investment Network of over 9,000 members to disseminate and promote its work on investment and enterprise.

In the current uncertain economic climate, the first G20 Trade and Investment Promotion Summit has sought to tackle uncertainty head-on by enhancing trade and investment promotion strategies and policy advocacy in order to benefit from global value chains, while ensuring sustainable and inclusive development.

On 6 November 2012, UNCTAD, the International Labour Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development hosted the second annual Inter-agency Roundtable on CSR. This annual event brings together corporate social responsibility (CSR) specialists from international organizations and national governments, along with select civil society representatives, to discuss current trends in CSR.

A new UNCTAD publication, the sequel to the 1999 Pink Series paper on expropriation, analyses expropriation provisions in international investment agreements (IIAs) and their interpretation by arbitral tribunals. Moving beyond a merely descriptive role, the paper offers policy options to assist States in drafting IIA clauses that help to promote sustainable development.

The Director of UNCTAD’s Division on Investment and Enterprise, Mr. James Zhan, has been in Istanbul this week to present the Division's recent Entrepreneurship Policy Framework (EPF) to a ministerial session of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Mr. Zhan was invited to speak about small and medium-sized enterprise development and policy options to increase the competitiveness of SMEs, particularly in OIC member States.

UNCTAD's Business Facilitation Programme (via its eRegulations project) and its Trade Facilitation Unit are to join forces to provide technical assistance to two Governments in Africa. The objective is to promote clear, transparent and fair rules to ease trade across borders.

At the Rio+20 ‘Earth Summit’ in June, UNCTAD Secretary-General Supachai Panitchpakdi issued an open invitation to stock exchanges around the world to commit to promoting sustainable investment. The Board of Directors of BSE has welcomed this idea and signed the Sustainable Stock Exchanges voluntary commitment.